It all started on a weekend morning when our family was out for breakfast. My son’s paper drinking straw completely dissolved in his smoothie, and I mentioned to him that we got rid of paper straws in the 1970s because they weren’t fit for purpose, and plastic straws were simply that much better. In the end he went through three paper straws on the one drink.

We live in Queensland where it is illegal to supply plastic straws under the Queensland Waste Reduction and Recycling Act 2011, which amongst many other things prohibits single-use plastic items including straws and stirrers, plates, unenclosed bowls, and cutlery. Having just reviewed the Act, I can say that single use plastics are a small portion of what this Act is all about; mostly it’s about “resource recovery”, which is a euphemism for paying private service providers for taking care of consumer waste.

Prior to this legislation, apparently a ban on lightweight plastic shopping bags resulted in both a significant reduction in the supply and sale of plastic bags in Queensland with litter audit results demonstrating a 70% decrease in these bags being littered. That makes sense – if there are no bags then they can’t be part of the littered landscape. However, despite many, many references to this figure of a 70% reduction in plastic bag litter in Queensland, I could not find the original source of this data. However I did find this academic study published in the peer reviewed academic journal “Resources, Conservation and Recycling” – “Plastic bag bans: Lessons from the Australian Capital Territory”, Macintosh et al. (Volume 154, March 2020, 104638). They conclude “the [litter] ban is unlikely to have materially reduced litter or improved other outcomes.” 

My personal bias is towards the peer reviewed article over the unreferenced Queensland government data. The conclusions of the academic paper matches my observations as well. There is very little litter in Australia compared to say South East Asia. Most of our waste ends up in the waste management system and not as litter. This is mostly a result of successful government campaigns and legislation going back to the 1970’s. Being born in the 60’s I well recall how much litter there was back then; for example, it was normal to throw your rubbish out of a moving car and country roadsides were one continuous garbage dump.

Around 2019 the then minister for the environment in Queensland put out a report entitled “Tackling Plastic Waste” ahead of amendments to the Waste Reduction and Recycling Act. In the report, the reasons for banning single use plastics are expanded beyond the original litter problem to include: marine plastic pollution, microplastics, microfibres, and toxins. Of course there was no data to demonstrate the link between plastic use in Queensland and these issues. The only data presented was the original dubious 70% reduction in litter.

The report also noted that about 300 million tonnes of plastic waste is produced every year, almost equivalent to the weight of the entire human population. Half of all plastic produced is used only once—and then thrown away. Less than one-fifth of all plastic is recycled globally. At least 8 million tonnes of plastics leak into the ocean each year—which is equivalent to dumping more than 170 wheelie bins of plastic into the ocean every minute.

Around 800 species worldwide, including 77 Australian species, are impacted by marine debris. Over 75% of rubbish that is removed from Australian beaches is made of plastic.

Turtles have a 20% chance of dying if they ingest just one piece of plastic, and over 70% of loggerhead turtles found dead in Queensland waters have ingested plastic. Plastic in the marine environment is long-lived—for example, (most damning of all) a 30–40 year old plastic bag was found in a Sunshine Coast waterway. All true, but yet banning single use plastics in Queensland won’t change any of that, except maybe in 40 years time they won’t find another plastic bag at Bulcock Beach.

At this point I would like to note that plastics in the ocean are mostly from Asia. Meijer et al. (Science Advances, 30 Apr 2021, Vol 7, Issue 18) calculated that over 80% of plastic waste in the ocean is from Asia. Australia represents only 0.6% of plastic waste in the oceans, and even that figure is massively overestimated because the study assumed there was equal litter per person in each country. If we really wanted to get the 0.6% figure to zero it might be more effective to simply put large surface collectors across the handful of major rivers that we have.

A 2020 report “Breaking the Plastic Wave” ( the University of Oxford, University of Leeds, Ellen MacArthur Foundation, and Common Seas) reported that “the largest contributor to 2016 microplastic leakage into the ocean is car tyre dust, contributing 78 percent of  the leakage mass; pellets contribute 18 percent; and textiles and personal care products (PCP) contribute 4 percent combined.” That is, almost 80% of microplastics in the ocean arise from car tyre wear and tear, washing off roads, down into drains and waterways. Why don’t we hear calls for the banning of car tyres I wonder? It really is a rather inconvenient fact. 

The raw materials used to make plastics generally originate from oil in the ground. When we landfill plastics they go back to the ground from whence they came. Generally speaking if a landfill site is properly designed, solid materials will not leach out of the landfill. There is of course an opportunity for dissolvable toxins to get into groundwater and rivers. But that is a failing in the design of the landfill site. In any case the degradation of ubiquitous polymers into smaller molecules does not lead to super toxic compounds, and they are certainly far less toxic than say the fumes you receive at the petrol pump.

The amount of greenhouse gases released during the lifecycle of paper straws has been estimated to be anywhere from the same as plastic straws to a quarter of the emissions. (Evolution of drinking straws and their environmental, economic and societal implications, Roy et al. – Journal of Cleaner Production, Volume 316, 20 September 2021, 128234). That is, if you end up using 3 paper straws instead of one plastic straw, you are definitely increasing your carbon footprint.  In addition, it is noted that paper straws often contain PFAS chemicals, currently the broadcast media’s go-to chemical bogeyman. These are toxic chemicals that don’t readily degrade in the environment and are linked to various cancers. From this data we could argue that so long as plastic straws go to landfill, they are far better for the environment than paper straws.

My view is that the ban on single-use plastics is based on well intentioned misinformation. Since we don’t have a word for it, I made one up – cisinformation. The Queensland ban on single use plastics is, at worst, a minor inconvenience for the population. You will note however that they wouldn’t dare ban car tyres, so we can safely conclude that the Queenslanders are high functioning hypocrites – happy to ban something when it results in a minor inconvenience but not if it causes a major inconvenience, and in the process no one bothers to check whether the ban is based on rigorous data or whether it has any chance of achieving any outcomes worth having.

In the same Queensland Ministerial report referred to above, it was noted that “research has shown that 7 in 10 Queenslanders are taking steps to reduce their consumption of single-use plastics when away from home.” Yet more unreferenced research results. But it shows that the government introduced the legislation, comfortable in the knowledge that it wouldn’t lose votes. But why do the people support this legislation and the thinking behind it? Well they get overwhelmed by messages in the broadcast media and social media focused on macro issues such as turtles swallowing plastic bags, deadly microplastics, plastic waste islands in the oceans, and so forth, and they do not having the skills or knowledge to challenge the connections that are being incorrectly drawn, so they simply support the “ban”. This support is also enabled by social norms – no one really wants to be seen as a contrarian.

Which makes me ponder the Australian federal government’s upcoming Communications Legislation Amendment (Combating Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2024. Arguably the ban on single use plastics in Queensland and other states is a shining example of misinformation. Well actually it might be cisinformation, but governments don’t have a category for well intentioned misinformation because they assume all misinformation has negative intent. Which says more about them than me.

My point is that our governments appear to be the greatest users of, and sources of, misinformation. In some instances their intentions are good. In others, not so. I am pretty sure the Combating Misinformation and Disinformation Act, if passed, won’t be used to protect us from government misinformation. Ultimately it is government misinformation which is the scariest because governments have the ability to create and enforce legislation, enforceable with physical threat. No one else has that power.

When a government starts complaining about misinformation maybe they are complaining about feeling undue influence to act on issues from their electorates about issues that are unsubstantiated or just transparent bullshit. Possibly it’s a good sign that they have identified the medias as the source of stupidity which they are compelled to follow because they need the votes to keep their salaries.

In talking to a colleague, she argues that it’s the “intentions” and the “signalling” which is most important here. That is, our collective willingness to follow these prohibitions without complaining means that we are primed for real action when it is needed. I am not so sure this is correct; in the process we seem to be alienating a large fraction of the population that can’t articulate what they know, and that is that governments seem to be beholden to both cisinformation and misinformation. These alienated people are ripe for a protest, e.g. they will vote for a dysfunctional representative just so long as he/she demonstrates a contrarian view to the norm (you know who I am talking about).